The present invention relates to a media holding device for displaying media. In particular, the present invention relates to an effective and efficient media rack that is adjustable and modular by incorporating different horizontal support components.
Various types of media racks for displaying media such as books have been around for many years. Additionally, such racks have also found service as displays for media such as video cassettes, compact discs (CD), and digital versatile discs (DVD). Such media racks come in many different styles and designs.
A common style found in both the home and office is the traditional tongue-style bookends, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,637,632. The bookends are supported by sheets that extend in both directions of the bookend, and are commonly cast from sheet steel or other light-weight materials. A variation of this is the free standing L-style, which also usually includes a soft-bottom friction pad of cork, rubber, plastic, or foam. Due their light weights, however, these styles suffer the drawback of requiring an auxiliary weight to hold them in place. Such weights maybe cut rock weights, cast steel weights, or more commonly, the weight of the books held in place. When the books are used to provide support for the bookends, the ability to adjust the bookends is hindered. Typically, several of the books must be removed before a bookend may be moved, resulting in a tedious and time consuming process to adjust the media rack.
Another variation of the tongue-style and L-style includes magnets that can hold the metal bookends in place when used on metal surfaces, such as metal shelves and file cabinets. However, such media racks are limited in use to such surfaces, and are not practical on wood shelves or desks.
Other types of media racks include large weighted bookends, which by their nature, are capable of supporting the media by their inherent weight. These bookends, however, are typically large and cumbersome, and limit the visible display of the books. As such, such bookends are not ideal where the bookshelf appearance of stored books is important. Moreover, due to their size, such bookends tend to take up a large amount of clearance at each end of the displayed books. This becomes a serious inconvenience when space is limited.
Another media rack design is the divider style, such as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,111,940, 5,205,420, and 5,555,990, which can be built into bookshelves, such as commercial library storage shelves, or built into a base tray. This design can have single or multiple lateral support dividers, usually mounted in slots either above, behind, or below the books being contained. This design, however, is limited to requiring a base surface or tray to support the media. A variation of this is the oblique-angle cradle, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,887,725, which incorporates lateral supports attached to a base that holds the media at an oblique angle. Such a design also requires a base to support the lateral supports.
Despite the variety of media racks in existence, none of them adequately combine the need for effective and efficient media storage and display. The requirements to meet this need include criteria such as minimal usage of space, organizational appearance, immediate accessibility, appealing visibility of the stored media, cost-effectiveness, media volume flexibility, and attractiveness. Many current products begin to reach their limitations at approximately a dozen or so books, at which point the weight of skewed or tilted books starts to become difficult to control. A row of books exceeding a dozen becomes quite heavy to each book end, the result of a domino effect magnifying the resultant load imposed by the books at the ends of the row. The requirement to firmly hold and control each bookend, while at the same time inserting or removing books is often both a strength and acrobatic challenge that grows as the number of books increases. Large format books, a number of tall or thin books, and a variety of media types, weights, and sizes increase typical problems in media storage and retrieval.
Some current products appear to be a trade off between effectiveness and efficiency. For example, many of the products have highly efficient stability for holding the media in place. However, they also have a very high usage of space to create the stability, which is undesirable. Accordingly, there currently exists a strong need for a media holding device that is both effective and efficient for storing and displaying media.